The Bard of Avon had famously said that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Occasionally, I come across a familiar face but am at a total loss to remember the name of the person. I always feel embarrassed and look for a way to get out of the difficult situation. To my delight, I have learned that I am not alone in not remembering names. It is a rather common phenomenon and very few people are immune to it.
Science tells us that human beings tend to remember faces better than names. Our brains engage with faces and job descriptions in a much more stable and durable way than with names. Unless it is an unusual name, such as Bartholomew Higginbottom IV or the poet Mira ji, the brain retains that information but for a fleeting moment.
We store names in our short-term memory. Such memory is transient and easily dissipates, leaving us a recognizable face but no name. Experts tell us that as we age, we tend to forget names more easily.
Rock art in Arabian desert left by ancient inhabitants
I marvel at people who possess a photographic memory. They can recall past events and names with ease. The majority of us, however, plod through life with this handicap. Occasionally, some smart aleck will put me on the spot and ask if I knew his name. To avoid the awkward situation, I now apologize for my shortcoming by telling the man (it is always a man) that with each passing day I lose more brain cells than my body can regenerate. If the truth were known, this hide-and-seek with names has been going on long before my hair turned silver.
I enjoy talking to my friends from high school and college days. We talk about incidents, events, and people. Not everyone remembers everything. We all add tiny bits of what we remember and slowly a vibrant and vivid picture emerges, a sum of our fragmented individual memories. It is like piecing together shards of colorful pottery into a recognizable whole.
7th Class, Government High No 1, Peshawar. Looking for familiar names and faces from a distance of 71 years
Recently a classmate from high school, Mushtaq Ahmad Taj whom I have not seen in many decades, sent me a group photo of our 7th-grade class. It took me a little while for me to recognize myself! I could recognize only four other classmates. In the front row I recognized only four teachers. On the other hand, I could recognize many more faces but could not remember their names. It was in 1950, a full 71 years ago. I am sure in the intervening years I have lost many more brain cells.
I now apologize for my shortcoming by telling the man (it is always a man) that with each passing day, I lose more brain cells than my body can regenerate. If the truth were known, this hide-and-seek with names has been going on long before my hair turned silver!
Recorded human history goes back only 5,000 years or so. There were civilizations on almost all continents that left tangible evidence of their existence and achievements but did not leave a written record. We may find bits and pieces of our shared history written on cuneiform clay tablets and ancient coins, but they seldom give us a complete picture. We fill in the gaps by excavating ancient sites and then we try to fill in the mosaic of history with discovered artifacts. Since our ancestors did not leave detailed accounts of their lives, we try to understand the past by piecing together the shreds and shards that we excavate or what wind and erosion lays bare for us.
Kanishka’s Stupa stood at 500 feet and was once the tallest building in the known world (in the 1st century CE) - rendering by Kim Seidel
Given the collective amnesia that human beings are prone to suffer, we often have no conscious or unconscious memory of our remote past and it is left to the sociologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists to find the dots and connect them to make a coherent line. It is not unlike my friends and I reminiscing about our shared past and creating vivid images from our foggy and fragmented bits of memories.
In the first three millennia of the Common Era, a vast Buddhist empire ruled a large swath of land that constitutes present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, western India, and the southwestern part of China. In the first century CE, King Kanishka built a magnificent stupa in his capital city of Peshawar where he entombed three small bone fragments of Lord Buddha.
University of Toledo student Madeline Begela with her precious find - a pottery shard that helped date the settlement between 700 and 1000 CE
The stupa soared 500 feet into the air and attracted pilgrims from all over the known world. Some of the Chinese pilgrims who visited the city left detailed accounts of the building and its surroundings.
The stupa stood tall and proud for 700 years and then it gradually crumbled to the ground. The people converted to the new religion of Islam and effectively cut the cord with their Buddhist past.
Almost a thousand years later, an American archaeologist, David Spooner, excavated the site and confirmed the existence of the stupa and recovered the sacred relics. And then the site was left to the elements and was soon covered over with dust and debris.
Forgetfulness forces us to learn and expand our horizons
Today, people in Peshawar and for that matter people in the rest of Pakistan and Afghanistan have no conscious knowledge of their Buddhist past. There is a complete amnesia about the magnificent kings and their benevolent realms.
The same is also true of Indus Valley Civilization. 2,500 years before the Common Era, a magnificent civilization prospered on the banks of Indus River and on the banks of River Ravi that at one time flowed 6 km from its present course. Archeological explorations have provided evidence of the sophistication of the city states of the Indus Valley. However, we still don’t know the language they spoke and have not been able to decipher the heliography of that civilization.
Similarly, we know precious little about the Kingdom of Yam that rivaled the Nile Valley civilization in Egypt. It was mentioned in few texts from the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Or the Kingdom of Silla in Korea or the Land of Punt that at one time encompassed Eritrea, Somalia, and northeastern Ethiopia. Closer to home in the US, the Clovis people were the oldest indigenous people on the American continent, but we know very little about them. If these civilizations left any physical evidence of their existence, it lies deep under the debris of time.
The city of Toledo has been my home for some 50 odd years. It is located on Lake Erie and the Maumee River. There were Native Americans who had lived around here long before Toledo was founded in 1833. Excavations along the Maumee River have unearthed settlements that date back to 6000 - 3000 BCE. The cultural profile of the land on the riverbank is fascinating. Last year, I visited an archaeological excavation on the river that was being conducted by Professor Melissa Baltus of the University of Toledo. As we were talking about the history of the area, one of her students, Madeline Begela, came running with a big smile on her face and a pottery shard held in both hands. I could imagine how archaeologists through the ages felt when they uncovered something worthwhile. That piece of shard and others that Madeline and her team-mates have unearthed put that settlement between 700 and 1000 CE.
The trait of forgetfulness, both individual and collective, is part of the human experience. Whether trying to remember a face with a name or trying to fill the gaps in the tapestry of human history, forgetfulness forces us to learn and expand our horizons.
I tip my hat to anthropologists, archeologists and sociologists who continue to find missing pieces in the mosaic of human history.
Dr. Sayed Amjad Hussain is an emeritus professor of surgery and an emeritus professor of humanities at the University of Toledo, USA. His is also an op-ed columnist for the daily Toledo Blade and daily Aaj of Peshawar. He may be reached at aghaji@bex.net
Dr. Sayed Amjad Hussain is an Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery and an Emeritus Professor of Humanities at the University of Toledo, USA. He is the author more recently of A Tapestry of Medicine and Life, a book of essays, and Hasde Wasde Log, a book of profiles in Urdu. He may be reached at: aghaji3@icloud.com
